I'm Nine Again

The car rolled slowly down the gravel track leading deep into the valley between two large cliffsides. The sun had gone down beyond the many hills and mountains an hour ago. I slept for most of the drive. Alice and I barely exchanging words. I couldn"t bring my self to speak to her as if nothing had happened and it tore me up on the inside whenever I thought about it.

The gravel track soon came to an end and Harry stopped the car and looked at the GPS details on his phone.

"The road ends here kids," he said, "It looks like a short walk until you reach the coordinates that the Scarlet woman sent you."

"Alright," I said, stretching my arms out across the back seat, "Open the hood, we may as well get a gun or two for this one."

"Of course, we should take guns," Alice bit, "There is nothing that Scarlet said that doesn"t indicate that this is some sort of elaborate trap."

"They are in Pakistan," I said, "They have been for a few years unless they decided one day that they were going to send a few people to fly back purely to trap us like this."

"I did say elaborate trap, didn"t I?" she asked, "Because that would encompa.s.s elaborate."

"This is going to be good for us," I said, "We get to raid their base and then blow it up."

"Sorry Sean, but I"m not like you. I find it hard to trust people whose sole intention is to kill us," she said.

"Okay!" Harry interrupted, "I don"t know what is going on between you two, but you kids were okay yesterday and now you"re fighting. You need to focus on the mission, not whatever petty squabble you have going on right now."

"Whatever," I said.

We armed ourselves from the boot of the car and started to make our way through the dense bushland. The path wasn"t hidden very well, but it was in a very out of the way location so the chances that someone would even go down this road in their car let alone follow this path was low.

"You"re being really s.h.i.t today Sean," Alice said as we trudged our way along the track.

"I told you how I felt Alice," I said, "You just ignore that."

"I don"t ignore it Sean," she said, "It"s you that ignores me."

"You"ve got to be joking," I said, "Every time, you cozy up to me and then leave me with complete disregard for how I feel."

"You don"t consider my feelings," she said, "You"ve never asked why. Why I feel the need to distance my self all the time."

"That"s exactly what I ask!" I snapped.

"Volume!" Alice bit back.

"That is exactly what I ask," I said more quietly as we started walking up an incline on the way to one side of the cliff face. "I ask that every single time Alice. Every single time you do this to me I ask why! I ask you how I can understand, what I can do to help, why you feel that you can"t tell me what is going on!" I started to breathe heavily as I was getting angry, "How dare you try to put this on me?" I asked, "You just lied! You straight-up just lied to me about this. Don"t blame me for not caring, I have done nothing but care for you"

"I don"t know why I said that," Alice said.

"Why do you feel the need to distance yourself?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"You wanted me to ask that exact question," I said, "So I"ve asked it. Why do you feel the need to distance yourself?"

"Can we not do this now?" she asked.

"You asked me why I was so s.h.i.t today, I told you," I said, "You wanted me to ask you why you are so distant, so I asked you. I"m doing everything you wanted, and you still keep dodging around giving me any semblance of an answer."

"Sean, please, another time. You"re sounding desperate," she said.

"Oh, f.u.c.k off," I said, "Whatever, you do what you want to do. But if you can, try to keep me out of it," I said, "I don"t want to play your games anymore."

"They aren"t games!" she said.

"We"re here," I said.

I didn"t recognize what I was looking at, at first. The large metal door was painted to look exactly like the cliffside. Cameras were placed all around the entrance. The path widened towards the door, which was probably a heavy traffic area for the group. They probably walk single file through the dense bushland to avoid creating a distinguishable path, although it wasn"t hard to find on the other side of it, so these tactics probably weren"t even that necessary. I walked up to the door and pushed on it. It was bolted shut. Alice was scanning the forest surrounding us with her weapon raised, looking out for any signs of a trap. I retrieved my phone from my pocket and started to dial in the number Scarlet gave me. I hit the call b.u.t.ton and held my phone up to the door.

Beep.

The door slid open to the sides and a small gust of cold air blew past us as we were greeted with fluorescent lights, lighting up a hallway in front of us.

"What is it with people from the future and having crazy elaborate bases?" Alice asked.

"We have a crazy elaborate base," I replied.

"It"s almost like a spy movie," she said.

"Traveling around the world and fighting against the future," I said, "It"s pretty much exactly like a spy movie."

"Let"s go in," she said, "I wanna see what data they have on us."

"Yeah, and what data they have in general," I said, "They would know more than we do."

Walking into the base down the long hallway, we moved carefully with our guns raised aiming at any break or corner in the wall, making sure that we weren"t walking into an ambush. After two minutes of walking the hallway came into a bend and once we rounded the bend the first thing we saw was the ma.s.sive structure. It looked like a giant mechanical cylinder but with computers lining the sides of it. It would have been a room about 20 feet tall with the structure going from the floor to the roof.

"Woah!" Alice said.
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"That"s gotta be their server," I said, "Let"s see if we can find a terminal."

"We should hurry up and find their armory," Alice said, "We want to blow this thing up and get out of here as quickly as possible."

"Okay, how about this," I said, "We"ll snoop around the base and figure out what we can, then we"ll steal all of the data, hopefully, we can zip it to fit onto my hard drive. Then we blow the place up."

"Leave that part to me," Alice said, "I"ve been training with explosives lately."

"I know, I can hear it. Pro-tip, stop doing that s.h.i.t at 2:00 AM," I said.

"Pro-tip," she said, "You want to get better at what you"re doing, start doing it at 2 am."

"That"s a stupid tip," I said.

We walked around the base of the preservationists. It was smaller than I expected. In my mind, I had expected this large underground organization that was operating on a work wide scale, but other than their ma.s.sive mega server structure in the middle of their base, it was comparable to the size of our own base. Weapons and schematics were strewn across the place more so than in our base. We kept our base mostly as a living quarter, but the Preservationists seemed to operate it as a proper military system. The Kitchen was small and there was a shared dining table. No areas to relax and rewind. Most of the rooms were filled with bunk beds whereas we had about 12 single rooms. I came across the only single room in the base, with red velvet furnishings and sent of old perfume, it was easy to tell that this was Scarlet"s room.

Even though she hadn"t been in this room for years, the only thing to indicate that would be the dust layer on most things. The smell, the look, and the overall vibe made it feel like she was still actively living there. I took the time to look around the room and found vast amounts of paperwork, all written in some kind of code. I shoved them into my bag and continued snooping through her room. Sticky taped underneath her bed was a manila folder. I pulled it out and started to read through the contents. It was all written in English. It was some sort of diary entrance.

"I can not forgive anyone who steals from the future! People who are using their knowledge of the future to steal from it, in the past. The man who killed my husband and stole my entire future from me. I"ve already experienced the time with my man, but the Yenn in this past will never get to experience what she deserves. She will never get to experience her perfect wedding day by the sh.o.r.es of Byron Bay. She will never get to go on her honeymoon to France. She will never be able to have her two children Gavin and Ellie. My children will never be born because of a man who used his hatred of the future to kill my husband in the past. He didn"t kill one person. He killed three. He killed my husband and my two children who will never be able to be born. No one should ever steal from the future to affect the past. I won"t allow it. If I have to kill everyone from the future to save a single soul from the past, then I will kill everyone from the future. No past no future. No past no future. No past no future."

The rest of the page was covered with "No past no future" written within the lines of the page and when the lines run out at the bottom of the page the words continue the sides of the page, where ever she could fit in another line, she wrote, "No past no future."

"What the?" I asked to myself, "This woman is legit crazy. Like 100% legit crazy."

So her name was Yenn.

"Sean!" Alice called from somewhere within the base, "Sean come to have a look at this!"

I ran back out into the main room and saw Alice standing at a terminal by the mega server. I strolled to her and looked over her shoulders at the screen.

"What did you find?" I asked.

"They have so much data here," Alice said scrolling through the files on the screen, "There is information on an aid to the Iranian President who they believe is from the future. Same with Osama Bin Laden, they are 100% sure that Osama has been taken over by a time traveler. That"s why they are in Pakistan right now!" she said, "And look, they know we are operating out of the A.C.T but they don"t know where."

"Hold on!" I said noticing something about some of the files.

"What"s up?" she asked.

"That one right there on Bin Laden," I said, "Right-click on that file and click properties."

Alice did as I said and a whole bunch of information popped up on the screen related to the file.

"See that," I said, "Last updated, 10th of Jan, 2008."

"They"ve been updating the files," Alice said, "Do you think someone is here?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I think they are updating them remotely."

"What are you thinking Sean?" she asked.

"Move," I said pushing Alice away from the terminal. I exited the doc.u.ments and opened the device manager.

"I hope I"m wrong," I said, "I really hope I"m wrong but if I just filter out all of these servers."

"C4 support beam 1"

"C4 support beam 2"

"C4 support beam 3"

"C4 support beam 4"

"C4 Server 1"

"C4 Hallway Support 1"

"f.u.c.k!" I yelled, "f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k f.u.c.k!"

"What"s going on Sean!?

"WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!" I yelled, "THEY CAN OPERATE THE SERVER REMOTELY AND THIS PLACE IS RIGGED TO BLOW!"

I grabbed Alice"s hand and started to run.

"SO THIS IS A TRAP!?" She asked.

We started running towards the hallway, almost tripping up the steps as we ran. The gla.s.s doors 20ft in front of us closed. Alice let go of my hand and raised her rifle at the door. Ratatatatattat! As she emptied her entire magazine into the door the gla.s.s shattered as we jumped through.

"You led us into a trap you idiot!" she yelled at me as we ran.

"I"m sorry!" I said, "I didn"t think they would have the smarts for remote demolition!"

"You"re not that f.u.c.king smart Sean!" she said, "Stop underestimating everyone around you!"

There was a loud explosion and a deep rumble before the tunnel in front of us, right before the door collapsed. Rocks where flung directly at us, hitting me in the face and Alice across the arm, drawing blood from both of us.

"f.u.c.k!" Alice shouted, "No!"

We both turned around to see explosions going off in the base behind us followed by the caving in of the tunnel. I turned to Alice.

"This wasn"t how this was meant to go!" I said.

"Sean I"m scared!" Alice yelled.

She ran the few steps towards me and gripped her arms around me tightly. I returned her embrace as she cried into my shoulders. I started to shake as violently as the cave walls around us were shaking.

"I love you!" she said, "I"m so sorry, I love you!"

"I love you Alice!"

"I"m sorry Sean," she said, "Please, please live!"

She put one of her legs behind my legs and pushed me forward, tripping me onto the ground with her full weight on top of me. I couldn"t help get lost in her eyes before she dropped her face on to mine and kissed me pa.s.sionately before pulling back up to look into my eyes as the rocks started to fall above her.

"REWIND"

She dropped her face on to mine and kissed me pa.s.sionately before pulling back up to look into my eyes as the rocks started to fall above her.

"REWIND"

She dropped her face on to mine and kissed me pa.s.sionately before pulling back up to look into my eyes as the rocks started to fall above her.

"REWIND"

She went to drop her face onto mine, but I quickly pushed her out of the way and started to count the rocks as they fell.

"REWIND"

I pushed her face out of the way and started to look at the rocks falling from above her. A large rock was falling from the ceiling, about to crush her back.

"REWIND"

I pushed her face out of the way and a.n.a.lyzed how big the rock was and where it was going to fall exactly. The corner of the rock was going to crush Alice"s back the second it landed on her. We were slightly to the side of the center of ma.s.s.

"I can do this."

"REWIND!" I yelled.

Time went backward for the sixth time. The desperation in Alice"s face returned as her face was pulled back in front of mine, as the rocks above her slowly rose back to the ceiling. The slow rewind of time came to a halt and then time started to continue its normal track forward. The rocks began to fall once again as Alice started to drop her face in to kiss me. I grabbed her body and rolled us to the side with all my strength and turned to face the roof with the rocks falling fast.

"STOP!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.

I closed my eyes as I yelled. The sound of heavy rumbling continued as the hallway shook around us and the sounds of electrical wires shorting all around us electrified the feeling of the air. After a moment the rumbling sound stopped. I opened my eyes and found that the rock that was suspended above us by my stop time ability. Rocks had fallen in between and underneath the rock and even when I let go of my time stop ability on the rock, it held its place, supported by all of the rubble underneath it. We were trapped in a one-meter long 2-meter-wide air pocket within the rubble.

"We can do this Alice!" I said, "We can do this."

I turned down towards Alice who was underneath me. Most of her. Her entire body up to her head was visible. Beyond that was rubble with thick red liquid oozing out of the cracks.

"AHHH NO!" I screamed, "REWIND!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. I watched slowly as the red liquid began to ooze back into the cracks in the rocks. The stained red floor moved in reverse towards the rocks until finally, the rocks began lifting off her face. I could see the broken and crumbled remains of her face slowly break back into place with a sickening crack each time a new piece of rubble was lifted off her face. Her eyes opened with a terrified look in her eyes, tears reversing back up her face and blood from the lip she was biting slowly climbing back into her mouth. I could send that the rewind was coming to an end. I quickly threw my hand behind her head and pulled her toward the center of our air pocket as time continued as normal. The falling rubble crushing some of my fingers as it fell.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!" I screamed.

The rumbling continued but the air pocket remained where we were safely entombed. Alice grabbed my coat.

"Sean!" she yelled, "Sean are you okay?" she said with tears streaming down her face and blood pouring down her lip.

"Alice!" I cried, "Alice I love you! I love you so much, Alice! Please don"t leave me, I love you so much!"

"Sean," she said, "I"m right here Sean, I"m not leaving you."

The pain of watching Alice"s broken corpse crack back to life with terrifying fear in her eyes. That pain was more than I was feeling in my fingers as they were crushed underneath the rocks. I could probably have tried to rewind one more time, but there was too much going on in my head to even consider my powers.

"I love you Alice!" I cried, "Please don"t leave me!"

"I"m right here Sean!" she cried, "I"m right here!"